


What Slips Between the Cracks

by Buffintruder



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: Seven times the IPRE remembered something Lucretia forgot to erase





	What Slips Between the Cracks

After Merle Highchurch leaves behind his wife and kids, he takes the opportunity to see the world. It’s shocking how little he knows about it, unaware even of things like geography and city names. Merle knows that he has lead a rather sheltered life, having only really spent time in the community he grew up in and the beachside town where Hecuba still lives, so he decides to find work as an adventurer and sets off to see everything he’s missed out on.

The first place he visits is Neverwinter.

(“How have you not heard of Neverwinter?” his newly-wed wife condescended when Mavis asked to visit the Neverwinter Children’s Museum of Magic and Merle had no idea which city she was talking about. “You really have been living under a rock your whole life.”

Well now Merle will show her. He’s going to be more cosmopolitan than Hecuba could ever dream of being.)

It’s a nice city, but Merle doesn’t stay long; he’s filled with a wanderlust that isn’t quenched after visiting just one location. He spends over a year travelling as far away as he can, and it’s not until he’s days deep into a tropical jungle that he stops to wonder why he’s still running. It’s not like Hecuba is going to chase him here; she likes him just about as much as he likes her. Probably even less now.

He can head back to a more familiar climate without going back to his life from before. Since Merle isn’t a huge fan of the area he’s currently in, with all the bugs and poisonous creatures, it’s probably the best option.

That isn’t to say the jungle he’s in isn’t beautiful, because it absolutely is. Tiny holes of sunlight speckle the shadowy, moss-covered trunks with spots of gold. Every once in awhile, the bright blues and reds of birds and insects show through the thick green vines and brush. There are flowers of every shape and color combination possible. There aren’t many places in the world that are more filled with life than this one is.

Merle decides to take one last moment to enjoy the wild peace of this jungle before turning around and heading back. One flower catches his eye, a bright blue thing with silver flecks, a species so different from anything Merle has ever seen that he can’t compare it to any flower he knows the name of. On impulse, he leans over to smell it. It can be a bit of a gamble in a place like this where half the time flowers smell like rotting fruit or worse, but he’s curious.

He ends up lucky this time. The scent is at once entirely unique and oddly familiar. He’s certain that he’s never encountered this flower before—the leaf patterns are extremely distinctive, and Merle would know if he has seen it—but the smell nudges something tucked away in some forgotten corner of his mind.

Searching through faded memories, Merle catches a glimpse of wooden boardwalks and the neatly trimmed and orderly flowers of a public garden, which is odd because he isn’t sure that he’s ever been to one of those. Not like this one at least, where the garden exists merely to be admired and enjoyed with no other purpose such as growing food or worshipping a god.

But that isn’t the strangest part. When Merle tries to attach an image to the odor he remembers, the one that pops up is too silly and impossible to actually exist. He must be remembering something from a dream, Merle thinks. Because there is no plant in this world with leaves like a brilliant sunset and a voice like a chorus of flutes.

...

It’s been a long, boring day of travelling between shows, and Taako is more than ready to do something he actually enjoys. Sitting in a cart for hours is  _ dull _ .

“Dinner’s on me tonight, my dude,” he says once he and Sazed have stopped for the night. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

Taako doesn’t normally volunteer to make their meals because what’s the point of having an assistant if not to dump the less exciting work onto? But tonight, Taako feels like making something, even if it’s not the flashy stuff he does on stage. Maybe  _ because _ it’s not. He is more than ready to do some cooking without any pressure, just for the fun of it.

And Taako might be feeling a little bit nostalgic because he decides to go for some old fashioned bean soup and biscuits, something he hasn’t made since he was young, finding jobs with passing caravans. It’s not a difficult recipe, so Taako can relax his mind while his hands do the familiar work. It is exactly what he needs right now.

He sets a pot of water to boil while he peels and chops up a couple of carrots. Cutting vegetables and stirring in transfigured dried beans into the water is something he has been doing longer than the average lifespan of most species, so he does it with skill and efficiency. Even without using much magic, Taako likes to think that the ease with which he works would look beautiful to an outside observer. Not that he normally has anyone with him when he’s cooking a meal for himself like this.

Out of nowhere, a feeling of aching loneliness strikes him so strongly that for a moment, the entire world feels wrong and out of alignment. Which is ridiculous. These days, he often cooks in front of a crowd, but to him, cooking has always been Taako Time, an activity he can be completely himself while doing because he’s always been doing it by himself. It’s not like he’s ever had company while cooking, so why does he miss it now?

Taako roughly sweeps the thoughts out of his mind and shoves the knife down harder than is strictly necessary to cut through an onion. His eyes sting, but since it’s just the juice spurting up as the rings of onion flesh are split apart, he ignores it. It’s harder to ignore the silence pressing down on him, drowning him in its stillness.

When the last ingredients are poured into the soup, Taako stirs it a couple more times before tasting it. It’s perfect, created precisely in the one hour time limit he has given himself, just like years and years of experience told him it would.

It’s great having a lifespan as long as an elf’s, Taako thinks smugly. He has the time to really master the art of cooking before he’s even out of his young adult stage. Practice does make for perfect food and timing. Taako is about to call Sazed over, pleased with his accuracy, when he realizes that something is missing.

The biscuits. He forgot the biscuits!  _ How can that be possible?  _ Taako wonders as he frantically jumps up to dump some flour into a bowl. It’s not the right amount, and with a start, Taako realizes that he doesn’t know what the right amount of flour is. Taako’s sure that he’s always had biscuits with bean soup, but for some reason, he can’t remember making them as well as he remembers the soup. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t made the meal since he was a teenager. The soup doesn’t have specific proportions of ingredients to remember like the biscuits do, so it makes sense to remember how to make the soup more clearly. It still feels weird. Taako has made it enough times that he shouldn’t have forgotten it at all.

Taako ends up guessing the proportions because he knows enough about the general rules of baking to know how these things work. While he’s kneading chunks of butter into the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder (using melted butter won’t make the biscuits as light and fluffy, even if it is a lot quicker), Taako wonders what is taking him so long this time.

It’s never taken him longer than an hour to make this meal, and he’s done it enough times to be certain of this fact. Decades may have passed since he last made it, but those years aren’t going to make him  _ slower _ at chopping up or mixing ingredients. Really, it should have taken  _ less _ time since he’s only making enough soup for two people, rather than over a dozen.

Taako was working as fast as he normally did to make this meal, but somehow it still took him longer. He isn’t sure how he could have made the soup any faster because the only way he could cut down on enough time for the whole process to take only an hour is to somehow make the soup and biscuits simultaneously, but that can’t be how he did it in his past.

Doing something like that requires two people, and Taako has always been alone.

...

Barry Bluejeans is a mercenary. (He thinks.) It’s what the voice in the coin told him he was when he woke up naked in a nearby cave, and it’s not like he can remember enough about his life to prove or disprove that. He remembers a few things from his life before the cave, especially from early on, back when he was a kid. But the time between his adolescence and now is a giant gap; he could be doing just about anything in that time, and he wouldn’t currently know it, so he definitely could have been a mercenary the whole time. 

The whole situation sounds pretty fishy, and Barry’s aware of it, but he doesn’t have anything better to believe. The voice that claimed to be his past self did give him enough details about the parts Barry can remember of his life for him to trust it somewhat. So when it tells him that he’s a mercenary and that he should find Gundren Rockseeker and do whatever it takes to get hired by him, Barry obeys.

He’s not sure that it was a  _ good _ decision, especially after getting captured by goblins, but he’s safe now. The trio of adventurers that rescued him decide to make their way back through the long cavern tunnels to Phandolin. It’s a decision that Barry Bluejeans welcomes with relief. 

The goblin caves are cold and damp and far too dark, and Barry would honestly rather be just about anywhere else. Sometimes he doubts that he actually was a mercenary in the part of his life that he can’t remember. He really hates fighting and being in tough conditions like this. Brute force really isn’t his thing either, so he can’t imagine voluntarily choosing this sort of life. He isn’t necessarily bad at it though, and he doesn’t know what circumstances might have led him to do this kind of work. For all he knows, it was the only option he had.

There’s a large puddle in front of him, but Barry doesn’t realize it until he’s stepped into it. Some water splashes over the top of his boot, instantly soaking his sock. Biting back a curse, Barry lifts his foot and walks around the edge of the puddle, his wet sock squishing with every other step.

Barry glances at his current companions, but the three of them don’t notice him, too busy cracking jokes he isn’t entirely sure he understands. Their comfort with each other and their lack of attention to him makes him feel a little lonely. He doesn’t even really know them, but for some reason he wants them to be his friends.

His boot continues to squelch, and his foot feels cold and gross, and Barry just wants to be somewhere warm and clean. He thinks about caves and the animals that live in there and hopes that the puddle he stepped into isn’t full of mold or bat poop—guano, he remembers it’s called. The collection of water might even be big enough for there to be living things in it that he narrowly avoided stepping on. Fish, for example. Big, poisonous, mutant fish.

There’s something about the echoing footsteps in the still darkness that encourages creepy thoughts like that, but Barry knows it’s just a trick of his mind. It isn’t likely that anything ominous lives in that puddle. That knowledge doesn’t exactly keep away the eerie chill.

Mutant doesn’t necessarily mean evil or dangerous, Barry reminds himself. There was that one time he tried to replicate an experiment about mutation to see if evolution worked in other— in other—in other places too. He took a couple dozen fish with short lifespans (they had to be short; he only had a year to observe them, and Da—and someone didn’t want him to bring a bunch of fish with them) and divided them into two groups. One was the control, kept in a small tank by a window, exposed to sunlight. The other group was kept in similar conditions, but this one had a thick black cloth covering the glass of the tank. 

Once a week, using as little light as possible, Barry checked on the fish. Within a few generations, the eyes of the fish in the covered tank had stopped working. The control group remained the same, which was what Barry had assumed would happen, but Barry knows that everything requires proof in science. Even when the explanation (lack of sunlight) seems to be the obvious reason for a phenomenon (the loss of working eyes), the scientific method requires a control and— 

And where is this memory coming from?

Like waking up from a dream, Barry’s train of thought falls apart, leaving him feeling even more lost and confused than ever. He remembers the experiment, but he can’t remember where the idea came from or what kind of fish he used or why he had a one year time limit. His head is fuzzy and everything about his life makes even less sense than before. He feels like his mind is twisting, spiralling, a series of unanswerable questions and unknowable mysteries taking up all the space until there’s nothing left in his head, each bit of frustration at his lack of understanding leading him further into a trap of despair and hopelessness.

“Am I right, Barry?” Magnus calls out from a little ways ahead, knocking Barry back into the physical world. Magnus is grinning, expectantly waiting for Barry to back him up in whatever joking argument he’s having with Taako and Merle.

“Uh, yeah,” Barry says, even though he has no idea what he’s agreeing with. His heart feels heavier and lighter at the same time, and he isn’t exactly sure why.

Chuckling, Magnus turns back to his friends, and Barry returns to his swirling thoughts.

He  _ is _ a mercenary, right? So then why does he know so much about the scientific method and performing experiments?

There’s so much knowledge inside his head, Barry realizes. He doesn’t know how any of it got there; he  _ can’t  _ know without his train of thought dissolving into dust. It takes him a few tries to figure it out, but he learns that if he doesn’t try to think about why he knows something or what its context is, if he focuses solely on the facts, he can dig up quite a bit of information.

While he walks, his mind chases a dozen trails of thoughts. He remembers equations for physics in a vacuum without gravity, biological theories he’s pretty sure  _ haven’t even been discovered yet _ , information about the workings of magic and the universe that he can’t imagine how any mortal could ever figure out.

Barry is pretty sure that he could spend a century exploring the corners of his mind, but then they reach the exit of the caves, and after the cart ride to Phandolin there isn’t really much more time to think about it before he dies.

...

Being stuck in an umbrella really stinks. Sure, time is weird and Lup hasn’t been conscious the whole time she’s been in there (especially during the first couple of years when everything was scattered and she barely had enough energy to pull her consciousness into solid thoughts). But it’s been  _ over ten years _ and Lup is pretty sure that if Taako hadn’t found her when he had, she would have lost her mind from the boredom.

And yeah, even though now Lup gets to be with her brother and friends all the time now, even though her surroundings are far more interesting than the empty cave she spent ten years in, she’s still stuck in an umbrella, completely unable to communicate with her family. Not that they can even remember her anymore. She’s so close to all of them but so far at the same time, and it makes her feel helpless and trapped, and she hates it. Even fleeing from the Hunger wasn’t as bad as this.

It’s been three months since Taako first picked up her staff from her skeleton, and Lup’s almost gotten used to the feeling that she’s invading his privacy. In the past, they didn’t have many boundaries between them, but it’s different now because he doesn’t  _ know _ that she’s listening to everything he says and does. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter. But then again, neither does she.

A couple months passed since the whole train mystery, and no more “Grand Relics” have been found since then. Lup knows that Lucretia can’t truly be destroying them; the Light of Creation isn’t so easy to get rid of—they’ve tried—and Lup remembers what Lucretia advocated so hard to do with them. Lup still vehemently disagrees with that plan, but she can’t currently do anything about it other than hope things work out better than she expects.

Even though Lup is glad that they aren’t risking drawing the Hunger’s attention by bringing more pieces of the Light of Creation together, no new relics also means that Taako, Magnus, and Merle have been spending a lot of time on the moonbase. And frankly, Lup is relieved when the three of them finally decide to take some time off to visit the markets of Neverwinter. She is rather tired of spending all of her time either resting against the side of Taako’s bed or being used in training battles.

Shopping, Lup learns however, is nowhere near as fun when she’s stuck inside an umbrella and nobody can remember she exists. Lup can hear everything, and she has a pretty  good sense of where things are, but she can’t actually see any of the merchandise. She can’t talk to her brother either, and that was always the best part of the shopping experience.

At some point, Taako splits off from the other two, and Lup feels even more lonely than before. Without the sound of her friends talking, her isolation is even more obvious. The only indication that she isn’t alone in the crowd is the rhythmic ups and downs of Taako’s walking. And even that stops for long stretches of time when Taako pauses to look at something.

Thankfully, this lasts only for a bit until Lup hears Merle’s gruff voice again.

“You thinking of getting your ears pierced? It’d be a good look on you.”

Taako snorts. He’s never wanted to get his ears pierced, no matter how many times Lup tried to convince him that  _ this’ll only last one cycle anyway, what’s the harm? _ She knows he won’t change his mind now.

“No way am I putting holes in my body, homie.  _ Nooo _ thank you.”

“Why’re you looking at these earrings then?” Merle asks, and if Lup had a physical body, she would have froze.

Taako never had anything pierced, but Lup loved them. Over her lifetime on their home world, she amassed a collection of piercings on her large ears and a few on her nose. Whenever she went to a place like this, Lup always dragged her brother off to a stall that sold earrings, especially during their century of interdimensional travel. It was alway fun to see what designs other worlds had, and it wasn’t like Lup could get new piercings that would last for longer than a year, so she had to settle for getting new earrings or nose rings instead. She didn’t think Taako would continue this tradition on his own.

“A present for a special someone?” Magnus suggests teasingly, and Lup can practically hear the waggle of his eyebrows from inside her umbrella.

“No, I—” Taako starts, and for a moment, he sounds so lost and broken, his mind trying to fill up a hole that the most important person in his life left behind. But then he continues again, and all of that is gone. “I just thought they looked nice.”

“ _ It was for me!”  _ Lup cries, though she knows they can’t hear her. Frustrated by her invisibility, tired of not being able to communicate with her  _ twin brother _ , sick of not existing, Lup sends a spark through the tip of the umbrella.

Taako jumps back in surprise, Magnus curses, and Merle asks Taako why he did that, but Lup does not feel any better. She is still as alone and apart as ever.

...

Davenport’s mind is not intact. Davenport knows almost nothing, but Davenport does know this. Davenport isn’t even sure if there was ever a time when his mind was whole, or if that’s just a dream his shattered mind imagined. Other than his name, Davenport remembers nothing beyond a decade ago.

Right now, Davenport works on a moonbase. The Director, Lucretia, gives him orders sometimes, and Davenport follows them. Davenport assists her often, fetching things she needs, organizing paperwork, and that kind of thing. She’s a kind boss even if sometimes, when she thinks Davenport won’t notice, she looks at Davenport like her heart is breaking. Overall, it’s not necessarily a bad life, Davenport thinks.

It’s just that something is missing, something so important that Davenport is nothing but a hollow shell anymore, going through the motions. What little spark of life still exists in Davenport is mostly consumed by trying to figure out who he is, trying to remember, grasping for knowledge so close yet so impossible to reach.

Davenport feels like a ghost sometimes, one of the old ones that have almost faded away, purposeless, drifting, existing but not living, merely taking up space while touching people’s lives as little as possible, an echo of former glory.

Davenport walks down the hall of the moonbase and is almost invisible to those that pass him by without noticing.

The new Reclaimers walk by, but unlike many others, they look at him, acknowledging his presence.

“Hey, Davenport!” Magnus says, reaching his hand out for a high five.

Davenport lifts his hand up automatically, but inside his mind is reeling. Davenport is his name. It’s Davenport’s one certainty, the one last piece of himself that is fully remaining. ‘Davenport’ is the word Davenport clings to, the one thing Davenport knows is real. Yet when it comes out of Magnus’s mouth, it feels so horribly off. It feels as wrong as his name normally feels right.

Merle smiles politely at Davenport, and Taako makes a face. Davenport nods back because it’s what is expected. The moment they’re out of his sight, Davenport lets his mask drop.

Davenport knows his reaction was odd. Davenport tries to find some explanation for why ‘Davenport’ sounds off when Magnus says it, but Davenport’s thoughts don’t connect, and he’s filled with the strong sense that he’s missing some key piece of this puzzle. Or probably key  _ pieces _ . No, Davenport is missing this whole puzzle. So much is gone from his head, and nothing makes sense without it. Davenport is trying to scoop up water with a fantasy tennis racket.

Davenport tries to pay attention more. Since his name is the only thing Davenport really has, he figures it might mean something if he responds strangely to it under certain circumstances. After a month, Davenport learns that his name sounds weird when Taako and Merle say it too, but not as bad as when Magnus does. With everybody else, it feels the same as it always has.

One time, at a Bureau of Balance bowling night, as Magnus is stepping up for his first throw, he turns to look at Davenport and starts to say, “Cap—” 

For the smallest moment, there is a feeling of of rightness, that this is what Magnus should be calling Davenport, but then Magnus finishes up with,

“—itulate now and be spared the agony of me totally crushing your team!!”

And the moment is shattered. It’s just Magnus being overly competitive, nothing more.

Davenport shrugs, but inside Davenport is crying out in frustration.

...

“Do you really think I’m a terrible healer?” Merle asks Magnus one night.

It was supposed to be a New Year’s Eve party between the Reclaimers and Team Sweet Flips, with loud music and lots of alcoholic drinks. Then Angus showed up, and nobody (other than Merle) was willing to ask him to leave, so the party devolved into something more child friendly. Not that they played Fantasy Monopoly in a way that most responsible adults would consider child  _ appropriate _ , but still. 

It’s been the most fun Magnus has had in ages.

Midnight passed hours before, and Magnus and Merle are the only ones still awake. Carey and Killian are asleep on a couch, curled up around each other, and Angus is softly snoring on the ground right next to them. Taako and Noelle both left after about one, Taako out of boredom, and Noelle because she was feeling a little emotionally drained after a long night of partying.

Magnus is too tired to feel uncomfortable by the emotion behind Merle’s voice. They were joking earlier about their cleric’s inability to cast healing spells, but Magnus didn’t know Merle cared that much. He feels a little bad about his earlier teasing. He shrugs. “You must be doing good enough at least. We haven’t died, have we?”

“I suppose not,” Merle says, but he sounds maudlin. “Not yet at least.”

“You can’t always do everything. Sometimes you’ve just gotta try your best.” Magnus isn’t exactly sure whether or not it’s a helpful thing to say, but it sounds inspirational. 

Merle grumbles out a reply, but it’s not clear enough for Magnus to hear anything.

“You know, sometimes I feel kind of similarly. I get afraid that I won’t be able to save you guys,” Magnus confides. It’s dark enough in the room that he almost doesn’t feel exposed when he says this.

“Well, we haven’t died yet,” Merle replies. “So I guess the same goes for you.”

“But I’m the protector. What happens if I’m not strong enough or fast enough and something bad happens to you because of it?” Magnus is pretty sure he’s had this conversation before, even though he can’t place the exact time. It feels vaguely familiar in the way memories from long ago do. Maybe he told this to Julia, but the familiarity of it seems to come from a time even before her.

“That’s what I’m here for. If I can do my damn job right.”

“You’ve gotten us through scraps before,” Magnus says.

“I know. But still. What if I can’t when it really matters?”

Magnus doesn’t have an answer to that. He’s struggling with that question himself. “You won’t let us down,” he says.

“I hope so,” Merle says. “It’s just sometimes I feel useless and unwanted. Not part of the team, since I can’t even do this.”

“You know I started training with Carey, right?”

Merle nods.

“When we started, she told me that I need to stop throwing myself into danger all the time. Apparently I can’t protect all of you if I get myself killed. You don’t think that putting my own safety over you guys, even in a non-lethal situation, would be kind of against my role on the team?” Magnus isn’t really just saying it as a lead up to something that will hopefully reassure Merle. It’s a question that has genuinely been bothering him. But maybe he needs to ask it more than he needs to hear Merle answer it because he can already imagine Merle’s sarcastic response,  _ Yeah, because the only reason we keep you around is to take all the damage for us _ . _ We aren’t incapable of taking care of ourselves, you know, _ and Magnus knows that it’s true.

“Yeah,” Merle snorts. “We only keep you around so you can take all the damage for us. We are actually capable of taking care of ourselves, you know.”

That response is so frighteningly close to what Magnus imagined Merle would say that it takes him a moment to respond. He swears he’s had this exact conversation before, even though he is also positive that he hasn’t. This is the most personal he’s ever been with anybody other than Julia and Steven, and neither of them are as sarcastic as Merle. It’s a like deja vu so strong that it’s disorientating.

“Well, the same goes for you,” Magnus says eventually because, right, this was where he planned to go with that question.

“I guess it does,” Merle says, and they’re both quiet for a little bit.

...

Across the courtyard, Lucretia can see half a dozen of her employees sitting in the grass chatting. They’re laughing at something Taako is saying, and Lucretia smiles fondly at them, even though they can’t see her from her position in the shadows near the hangar. Curious as to what is making Avi gasp so hysterically, Lucretia moves over within hearing distance, still keeping out of their sight.

“And then,” Taako says, forcing his words through helpless giggles. Merle clutches his stomach, failing to hold back his laughter. “I was like ‘I’m Taako? You know, from TV?’”

Magnus collapses on his side, Carey has tears streaming out of her eyes as Killian buries her face in Carey’s arm, and from the shadows, Lucretia’s heart freezes.

“Why do you always say that?” Killian asks, once her laughter has subsided enough to speak. “What even is ‘TV’?”

It was in the middle of their century together, maybe year 68 or so. There was a civilization that combined magic and technology even more seamlessly than their home world did. It was a paradise of sorts, but only for the rich parts inside perfect walled cities. She knows that they had this form of entertainment called TV, but Lucretia knows little else about it. She spent that year in the parts of the world that the city people liked to pretend did not exist, the parts that did not have things like TV or a reliable supply of clean water. She ended up dying that year while helping a growing resistance movement, so she hadn’t even been there that long.

Taako and Lup spent their year inside one of those cities, and apparently Taako grew famous because of TV or something because he spent the rest of their journey saying a catchphrase he picked up during that cycle: “I’m Taako from TV.”

Lucretia is afraid, or maybe she hopes, that Taako remembers this, and the world seems to stop. She can’t imagine his anger at taking him away from his sister, and she doesn’t know if he has known this for a long time and hidden it or if he is just remembering now, and is there a reason why the voidfish’s powers aren’t working? Will he stop her plans or help her, and will she finally have her friend back or lose him forever?

“I don’t even know what a ‘TV’ is!” Taako says helplessly, pausing for another few moments as everybody falls back into laughter. “It just sounded cool!”

Lucretia studies his face, but it seems genuine from what she can tell. He doesn’t remember. Her plan is still intact.

The twins never explained what happened with the TV, so Lucretia never wrote it down. There was no story, no solid information to record. What could Lucretia say?  _ Something happened to Taako, and he became famous. This was due to a method of entertainment called TV, which the wealthy of this world enjoyed. I, having spent my time on this world outside of their cities, have no idea what this is, but Taako continues to reference it quite often. _ That would not be not a good addition to the record of their travels.

This must be the reason why Taako is saying that phrase. Lucretia isn’t sure whether the feeling that hits her with that realization is relief or disappointment.

But Lucretia has to put that aside. Midsummer is fast approaching, and the Hunger with it. She doesn’t have time to dwell on complicated emotions that was of her own making in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> The fish experiment in Barry’s part was based off of something I took from my memory of seeing something on tv like 5 years ago, so this isn’t an accurate depiction of real life. I looked it up after writing this to see if it actually works, and it turns out it’s more complicated than what I wrote, but this is a fantasy world so science can work how I want it to.  
> I wrote the whole tv thing for Lucretia’s part because Griffin said something about tv not existing in this world when Taako first said he was from tv, so I figured, what if tv didn’t exist in this world?


End file.
